


If I were a blade, I'd shave you smooth

by leiascully



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Facial Shaving, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 12:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River hates the Doctor's beard, so she does something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I were a blade, I'd shave you smooth

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: N/A, although potentially during "Day of the Moon"  
> A/N: For the Tumblr anon who wanted River/Doctor + shaving. Title is from Grace Potter & The Nocturnals' "Paris".  
> Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

"I loathe that beard," River says, out of nowhere. 

The Doctor strokes his whiskers. ”I thought it made me look dignified.”

"I think it makes you look like something’s died on your face," River says, in a surprisingly conversational tone. "I think I’ll have it off you, in fact."

The Doctor’s in a chair before he knows what’s happening, and he’d complain about it, except that River’s in his lap. She spends several long minutes there, applying strategic pressure with her hips and the soft heat of her lips, until the Doctor isn’t sure he could move if he wanted to. River climbs off, looking satisfied with herself, and pours a bowl full of nearly boiling water. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d put the kettle on. And then he doesn’t care much, because she’s back in his lap, making her point quite eloquently without a single word. 

When she leaves him again, gasping and helpless, it’s to get a towel out of the hot water and drop it on his face. She wraps it over his chin. He breathes through an open mouth, feeling the chill of his breath in relation to the steam rising off the towel. His world is reduced to the damp scald of the towel, compressed by terrycloth to a hot, wet singularity. When she takes the towel off, he isn’t certain what to do with himself. So he sits and watches as she whips lather in a cup.

"When did you learn to do this?"

She shrugs. ”I’ve been around. Or maybe I’m picking it up on the fly.” Her eyes gleam. ”Trust me, sweetie?”

"My face in your hands, River Song. You may be a bad, bad girl, but you’re all mine,” he tells her, which is something of a risky proposition. She dabs lather into his beard, looking pleased.

"Yes, I am," she says, and it’s half-threat, half-promise, all smug satisfaction.

He half-hopes she’ll climb back into his lap for the actual shaving, but she shows no signs of it. He sits with lather coating his face while she tests the edge of her razor. He doesn’t know where she got the razor, or how she produced it so quickly. He’s found it’s best not to ask questions he might not want the answers to. River looks him over with a critical eye and adds a little more foam with the brush, and then, before he can even really prepare himself, she’s got her blade against his face.

It’s all he can do not to startle away. He closes his eyes, intensely aware of the sharpness of the razor. She scrapes delicately at his face; he can feel the sudden shock of cold air against newly-bare skin. He wants to shiver, but settles for flexing his fingers on his thighs. He has given himself over to her. She is the master of him now. In this moment, the Doctor, terror of the universe, sits quiescently under the ministrations of his barber wife, his fierce mistress. River shaves him, carefully and thoroughly, short strokes segueing into longer, smoother passes, again and again until his face is bare. The Doctor, eyes closes, lets his fingers glide over his thighs in rhythm with the razor. When she swirls more lather over his skin, it’s a shock, and then pleasant, and then the brush isn’t gliding over his face anymore and he braces for the blade.

The touch of the razor is feather-light, but the hair falls away from his face. She is so deadly, and yet she takes such care with him. There’s his miracle.

When it is over, he is so smooth he hardly recognizes himself when he presses his palms to his cheeks, as if she has given him another face. River has not even nicked him: his hands come away clean (as if they could ever be clean). She holds up a mirror and he looks at himself: dark eyes, looming brows, a face only a River could love, perhaps. He feels new. She has stripped away his fears and his pretenses, washed them away with the last of the hot water. His skin is soft. The foam leaves a sharp, pleasant scent in the air and he breathes it in appreciatively.

"Here," River says, and tenderly, with a cloth that’s ice cold this time, she wipes the last traces of lather from his face.

"Thank you," he tells her. "I feel like a new man."

"You look like yourself," she says, her fingertips ghosting down the clean line of his jaw. 

"You gave me that," he says, and she smiles that mysterious smile. 

"Returning a favor," she tells him. "Better watch out, sweetie. That was quite fun. I might be tempted to take my razor to the rest of you."

He lets himself shiver as she walks away.


End file.
